The Soul Felt its Worth
by adangeli
Summary: When Sam is taken captive on what should have been a routine exploratory mission, her team is desperate to get her back. After her rescue, Jack believes he's the best person to help her recover.
1. Chapter 1

Jack took a moment to slow his breathing. He looked over at Teal'c who was annoyingly composed under the circumstances and then over at Daniel who was just as out of breath as Jack himself was. They'd take five and collect themselves before continuing on.

"Just because we know there's something down there doesn't mean those rings went down." Daniel pointed out. "There could be a ship in orbit."

"We've got to check, Daniel."

"I _know_ that, Jack. I'm just saying, maybe we should split up."

"Over my dead body. Which is exactly what it would take and you know that. We're checking out the whatever-the-hell you call the buried palace and then, if we don't find Carter, we'll figure out how to get up to whatever ship must be up there."

"Major Carter may by now be gravely injured," Teal'c felt compelled to interject.

Jack shot him a look. The Jaffa they were dealing with were apparently bad mamba-jambas. Worse than the typical fare. And the Goa'uld they worked for was a particularly evil sonuvabitch – had a penchant for torture. And he'd be nonetooglad to get his hands on the most delicate member of SG-1.

Jack busied himself by taking a drink out of his canteen. It helped him quench his thirst, gave him a moment to catch his breath, and let him have an all important moment to think. There was a structure, not too far from their current position, that could be an entrance to the underground lair of Kuk. They would enter there and comb the place until they found Carter. Because _not_ finding her wasn't an option. They'd just gotten the damn team back together, it wasn't going to fall apart now.

Granted, it was his fault, sort of, that the team had been apart in the first place. His extended vacation on Edora and then his undercover mission that had tested the limits of his friendships with his teammates. Truth be told, things still weren't quite right between him and any of them, which was why this rescue mission was going off a little bumpy.

"What do you think they're doing to her?" Daniel asked Teal'c.

Jack growled lowly. "You don't want to know, Daniel."

"Yes, I do, Jack."

"No, you don't." Torture wasn't pretty. And it didn't need to be highlighted. And he damn sure didn't need Teal'c outlining it for the softhearted one of the group.

"Maybe it's not as bad as we think," Daniel said, smally.

Jack hoped the younger man was right. It had been six hours. In six hours, very little could have happened to her. Or a lot could have happened to her. It was impossible to know. They were due for check-in at the SGC in ten hours. That gave them enough time to scout the lair and see if they could find Carter and get her out, if they'd need to come back in with reinforcements, or if they'd need to figure out how to get onto a ship.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," Jack said, and he outlined the plan for them. Get to the building, get in the building, scout for Carter, hopefully find Carter and get her the hell out of the building, get her back to the gate, get home. There were contingency plans of all letters depending on what they ran into, but ultimately it all boiled down to the same mission: get in, get Carter, get out.

Jack, Daniel and Teal'c readied their weapons and headed for the supposed entrance to the lair. There were guards there, but the guards were outnumbered by the remaining members of SG-1. Jack hoped that boded well for the rest of the rescue mission.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Sam came awake abruptly, her fight or flight response strong and already propelling her body up and backwards, away from whatever threats might be near her, but she was alone. In a cell. She took quick stock of her situation. She was in her uniform, but she had no weaponry. She felt like she'd gone a few rounds with a prize fighter, though.

She gingerly ran her fingers over her stomach and ribs. Yep. Bruised. She didn't think she'd cracked anything, though. She touched her face. Her cheeks and jaw felt fine. She rotated her wrists first and then her ankles, all seemed well. So it was just her torso, then, that took the brunt of the damage. Okay. It wasn't ideal, but she could manage.

She remembered being taken. She remembered being separated from her team, like a weak antelope from the herd. She remembered the four of them being overpowered by a contingency of Jaffa so huge that she scarcely remembered seeing such a thing. And she remembered being taken away and the guys being left behind and thinking that was bizarre.

She remembered the sound of Colonel O'Neill's, Daniel's, and Teal'c's weapons as they'd fired on the Jaffa and how the Jaffa had apparently been willing to sacrifice some of their own to capture her for their Goa'uld. She remembered fighting. She remembered the struggle to get out of their hands. She remembered the punishing blows to her ribs and stomach, then, to subdue her. And finally, one to her temple that must have knocked her out cold.

She hated being in a cell. She really hated being in a cell alone. There was something mildly comforting about having at least one of the guys with her when this sort of thing happened. But she had a really bad feeling about a Goa'uld that wanted only her and she hoped that the guys were doing everything they could to get to her even as she thought about them. She had a feeling, though, that it wasn't going to be a very easy task. That had been a _lot_ of Jaffa that had come to take her away.

She sat down with her back against the wall and her knees pulled up in front of her chest. She wrapped her arms around her legs and waited for something... anything... to happen.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Getting in had been easy. Moving around was proving to be harder. There were Jaffa everywhere. And while Jack was generally a fan of the _shoot first_ school of thought, in this particular instance, he thought it wiser to keep a lower profile. Even Daniel was uncharacteristically keeping his mouth shut.

They made their way down a short hallway that was, oddly, Jaffa-free. They checked each off-shoot and doorway for signs of Carter or jail-cells or other rooms that a Goa-uld might utilize if he had a woman like Carter in his clutches. Jack didn't want to think too hard about what kinds of rooms those might be. Because then he'd have to think awfully hard about exactly what kinds of torture his second in command might be undergoing.

When no signs of her were had they deemed the hallway clear enough and prepared to turn the corner. Jack peeked around and saw two guards at the other end, talking to one another. He pulled his head back around and gestured to Daniel and Teal'c their numbers and then leaned back against the golden wall. He pressed his eyes closed and thought for a moment. It was possible they'd just move along if they were given a moment. And then the three men of SG-1 could turn the corner and continue on.

The heavy sound of armored footsteps began to sound and damn if they didn't sound like they were coming in the wrong direction. Jack shot a look at Teal'c who exchanged the glance with O'Neill. The big man nodded and Jack and Teal'c steeled themselves for hand-to-hand combat. The quick, quiet type. Daniel, catching the silent conversation that passed between the two warriors, stepped back against the wall and watched, eyes wide.

Within moments, the two Jaffa stepped around the corner and into Jack and Teal'c's waiting hands. The melee was quick and ferocious. There were grunts of pain and the steady thwack of the impact of hands with flesh and the thunk of hands impacting metal armor. But in the end, the two enemy Jaffa lay on the floor in crumpled heaps, necks broken.

Jack tried not to think about what he'd done, what he'd had to do. It was a different thing killing a man bare-handed than it was shooting him. Neither thing was one to be taken lightly – and he never did – but it was war and he could compartmentalize his duty. But taking a life by hand was a singular experience he never had quite learned how to compartmentalize fully.

The three men made their way down the newly emptied hallway, clearing this one in the same way they'd cleared the last, still finding no signs of Carter. Jack suspected they'd have to get much further into the bowels of the building to find where they kept their prisoners or where they carried out their torture. These gilded rooms seemed too well-appointed for such things.

Jack led Daniel and Teal'c to the next corner and prepared himself to look around it for the next challenge.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The heavy sound of armored man moved down the hallway towards her. She felt the clenching in her stomach that signaled dread. She didn't know exactly what it meant that they were coming, but she knew it couldn't be good. Best case scenario they were bringing her food or water - which meant she was going to be here a while. Worst case scenario they were coming to get her for a round of torturing. Okay, that wasn't the _worst_ case scenario. But she wasn't up to thinking about the worst case scenario.

She kept her eyes steady on the door. She didn't want to show an ounce of weakness when he arrived. She wanted to appear cool, collected. She wanted to, maybe, get under his skin a little.

He was smaller than she anticipated. Maybe 5'10" or 5'11". He had sandy brown hair and wide set eyes that would have made him look home-spun and innocent had he not been wearing the metal armor and forehead tattoo that screamed _universal bad guy_. Sam imagined him having a mid-west, corn-fed accent and it made him seem a little less threatening, even as she noted the pain-stick he held in his left hand.

She nodded slowly and pushed herself up off the floor. He opened the door to her cell. It slid, didn't swing, she idly noted. It was either/or in places like this. He stepped into her cell and advanced on her. She stood her ground, but really, she had no where to go, up against the wall as she was. And she wasn't backing herself into the corner. Torture coming or not, she wasn't that woman. He grabbed her by the upper arm and propelled her out the door.

They were moving so fast her feet barely touched the floor. "Hey," she said, "can we slow down?"

It didn't seem to matter to him that he was running her off her feet. She stumbled over her toes more than once. He just hauled her up, his fingertips pressing bruises into her flesh. More for the count, she figured.

He dragged her into a round room and dropped her in the center of it. She was so off her feet that she fell to her knees, caught herself on the palm of one hand. The floor was textured, she felt, as it pressed against her skin and her kneecaps through her pants. It was uncomfortable. She pressed herself up into a standing position, not knowing if that was going to yield her recrimination or not. The Jaffa merely looked at her, no emotion on his face.

They stood there, looking at one another for long moments. Long enough that she considered making a break for it. A hidden door off to her left whooshed open and into the room swept the Goa'uld they knew as Kuk. He was a tall, thin man with long, black hair, a thin face, and a thin black goatee. He just _looked_ sinister. She instantly felt on edge.

"Samantha Carter of the Tau'ri," he said. "How very pleased I am to make your acquaintance."

She wished she were Jack-O'Neill quick with the quips because she was still searching for the perfect comeback when he continued speaking.

"I let you come around in your own time, that is a courtesy I will not afford you in the future. Rest assured that when you lose consciousness from here on out you will be placed directly in the sarcophagus. I am not a patient man, I have very little to entertain me, and you are here for my enjoyment."

Oh, she didn't like the sound of that at all. "And yet you could have had my entire team," she pointed out. "But you brought only me."

"I was interested in only you," he said with a smile. "Females are so much more fun to... break."

She shuddered at the thought of what this Goa'uld could do, especially if he already had issues with women. She steeled herself as best she could and waited for whatever was coming next.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Jack, Daniel and Teal'c made their way out of the lair, careful to go back exactly the same way they'd come. Once outside Jack stepped around the bodies of the two Jaffa they'd dispatched initially to make it inside and leaned against the stone doorway to take a drink from his canteen.

"So we'll need more people," Daniel said, finally able to talk.

"Yeah," Jack said shortly. "A surgical strike force."

"But we still don't know exactly where she is."

"But we know she's down there. We know _he's_ down there, so we know _she's_ down there. And there was no way we were getting through all those Jaffa," Jack pointed out. He capped his canteen and started off in the direction of the gate. They were going home a man down. That made his stomach churn. He knew he was doing the right thing, returning to the SGC to rally the troops, to get backup, to come back for Carter, but leaving her behind for god-knew-what to happen to her? He'd be a bad CO if that didn't just sit the wrong damn way with him.

"I think one of us should stay here," Daniel said.

"And do _what_?" Jack asked, incredulously. "No, seriously, Daniel?" Jack asked when the younger man started to interject. "What do you honestly think one of us could do here?"

"I don't know. But... doesn't it just feel... _wrong_... to leave her here?"

Jack scratched at the back of his head. "Yeah, yeah it does. But it's what we have to do. We've got to go back, debrief, get more people and come back and rescue Carter. It's the _best_ option."

"Surely they'd have to know that's what we're going to do..."

"Perhaps they do not intend to leave her alive long enough for us to rescue her."

"Teal'c? Shut up."

"I did not mean to-"

"I know," Jack said. "Just... I know."

They tromped silently the rest of the way to the gate. Which was a surprise, Jack was really expecting more of a fight from Daniel about someone staying behind. And truthfully, it was taking everything Jack had to go back to the SGC even though he knew it was the right thing to do. It was just his own personal mantra: never leave a man behind. And he was leaving behind not just a man... but his 2IC. Not just a man, but, damn him for thinking it, a _woman_. Not just a man, but the soul of the team. He could see it in Daniel's eyes, even in Teal'c's... they were leaving behind something integral.

Jack wished it were him. Not just because he always wished it were him, but because under the circumstances, the team could take it better if it were him. The three other members of the team were able to work more solidly together right now. Their trust wasn't tarnished. There was no friction between the other three members of the team.

There was an added layer of _something_ wrong between Jack and Carter, but he couldn't lay his finger right on it. That was bothering him, too, that with leaving her behind maybe there was some chance he'd never find out what it was. He wanted the chance to put his team back together fully – even if it meant having the tough conversations.

"Dial it up, Daniel," Jack gave the command unnecessarily, because Daniel was already tapping out the address for Earth. Without being told he punched in the GDO code and soon, they were passing through the event horizon and then into the familiar gate room. It took only thirty seconds, maybe, for the assessment to be made.

"Colonel O'Neill," came Hammond's voice over the loud-speaker. "Where's Major Carter?"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Sam gritted her teeth to avoid crying out in pain. She wasn't going to give the bastard any more than she absolutely had to.

"You will break, Samantha. You all do. You are not different. You are not special."

He brought the pain stick back down and jabbed it into the soft skin of her belly. She grunted at the impact and fought through the scream that wanted to rise up at the searing pain that tore through her muscles and organs as the lightning-like energy ripped through her body and exited through whatever opening it could find.

Her body attempted to twist away from the source of the pain, but she was shackled handily to the table and lashed down across her hips. There was no escape.

He pulled the pain stick away and then immediately jabbed it back down mere inches away from where he'd placed it before. She made a strangled sound, but it was all he was getting.

He relished in digging the pain stick into her flesh over and over again – into any of the soft, meaty parts of her, into any part of her that had organs underneath, into any place where tissue could burn from the inside out and cause such excruciating pain that she could die a little with each application of the stick to her body.

"Scream for me, Samantha, and this all could stop."

"You'll never stop," she said tiredly. "You'll just choose something new."

He chuckled madly. "Yes, yes, I will."

Finally, he looked into her eyes, watery as they were and smiled – the most evil smile she thought she'd ever seen before in her life. Then he gently, oh so very gently, placed the pain stick over her heart. That time, she screamed.

She was aware of being placed into the sarcophagus.

As she slipped off she had the idle thought that it was only seven days to Christmas.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack sat in his customary seat at the briefing room table but it felt wrong without Carter by his side – especially knowing she was in some jail cell somewhere at best, but likely being tortured by some meglomaniacal Goa'uld. Daniel was pacing the floor waiting on the General to come in from his office. Teal'c was seated, his jaw clenched and twitching every so often in a manner Jack had come to read as severe annoyance.

Hammond breezed into the room a file folder in one hand and a pen in the other. He took his seat. "Sorry for the delay, I was on the phone with the Joint Chiefs updating them on this new turn of events."

"I didn't realize Carter was notifiable."

"She's the foremost leading authority on the Stargate, son. She is."

Jack nodded grimly. He should have realized that the Joint Chiefs would want to know where the main brain behind the operation of the stargate was at all times. The things she knew about the program could, in the wrong hands, doom Earth, he supposed. He could understand why, on multiple levels, they'd be concerned about her being in the hands of a Goa'uld.

"We're recalling SG-3 now," Hammond said. "And we'll put together an eight man strike force. Colonel O'Neill, you'll, of course, lead that team."

"Yes, sir."

"Daniel and Teal'c, you'll remain here at the SGC."

Daniel appeared prepared to accept that on the grounds he wasn't militarily trained. Teal'c on the other hand bristled immediately. "General Hammond, I am an able bodied warrior-"

General Hammond held up a forestalling hand. "Teal'c, I know. This is about special tactics and training only. These men have undergone rigorous training to carry out these sorts of missions and are used to working together in a specific manner. It's for their safety as well as for Major Carter's."

That seemed to calm Teal'c down.

"Buddy," Jack said, "Carter will understand why you're not there."

Teal'c nodded once very slowly and Jack understood that Teal'c's objection had everything to do with being there for his teammate and nothing to do with his own desire to be on the mission.

"Go ahead on to the infirmary. You'll gear back up as soon as SG-3's been recalled and a mission strategy can be worked out."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

After the first trip through the sarcophagus, she was thrown back into her cell. She was shaky and light-headed and felt like she'd been over-cooked. It was an odd feeling that felt both equal parts awful and uncommonly good.

As she sat alone she felt a little like she was going to climb out of her skin, both with the anticipation of Kuk's return and because of the residual feelings from the sarcophagus. She folded herself up much as she had the first time she'd waited to be taken away and waited for whatever was going to happen this time around.

It was strange to have gone through what she just went through and to feel no physical pain. To have no physical reminders of the hell she'd just been put through. Oh, but she remembered. She had vivid memories of the way he'd pressed that pain stick against her body. She wasn't sure she'd ever forget that.

She had a sudden flash of memory that wasn't hers. Jolinar's memory. Kuk's sneering face. And suddenly, a litany of all the ways he enjoyed torturing her at some point in the past. Sam groaned. Her head lolled back against the wall. Her body wracked and shuddered with remembered pain.

She decided it was worse to know what could be coming than it was to wonder what he might possibly come up with. Because now she was sitting against her wall shivering with the knowledge of what could be coming. She'd seen, even felt some of the things that Jolinar had experienced at his hands in that quick flash of memory and Sam wasn't sure she was up for experiencing them in real time. Sometimes forewarned wasn't forearmed, it was fore-bared.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Jack and the rest of the strike force were geared up and ready to go and waiting in the gate room for the dialing program to finish and the event horizon to form. He was studious about not looking at Daniel and Teal'c standing up in the control room. It wasn't that he thought they were upset about being left behind, it was that he didn't need to see the earnest looks in their eyes. He knew what was at stake.

He had seven men behind him who were vibrating with energy, ready to go charging through the gate on his command, to bring back his teammate no matter what state they may find her in. And Jack was concerned. In the sixteen hours since they'd left her, anything could have happened to her.

Jack cursed the slow grind of the military machine that meant it took them that long to recall SG-3, put the strike force together, and come up with a plan to save her, but he'd rather they had a solid, executable plan than some slip-shod, half-baked idea to go traipsing in there with. Still, sixteen hours felt like a lifetime to leave her in the clutches of a madman.

As much as he tried not to think about what he could be doing to her, he drew from his own experiences and knew exactly what she could be going through moment by horrifying moment. He hoped she was curled up in a cell somewhere, forgotten. But he was sure that Kuk wouldn't leave his prize alone for long.

As the dialing program finished and Harriman should have been saying _Seventh chevron, locked_ , silence reigned. Then, "we can't get a connection," came over the loud speaker.

"What do you mean, can't get a connection?" Jack turned and hollered, looking up at the glass.

There was a flurry of activity in the control room and then Harriman's tinny voice again, "We'll try dialing again, sir." The gate began to spin. "First chevron encoded."

Jack turned back to the gate and waited while he went through his rigmarole again. Again the gate didn't connect.

"What the hell is going on up there?" Jack called.

"Stand down, Colonel, and your men," General Hammond's voice rang out. "Let us find out what's going on."

Jack huffed. Just what they needed, another delay. He hotfooted it up to the control room.

For the next five hours they dialled unsuccessfully.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

She lost track of time sometime after the third trip through the sarcophagus. She did know that at least two of the trips happened in the same day because he'd gotten a little too excited with his knives at one point and nicked the all-too-important femoral artery. It had pissed him off more than anything else, that he'd had to relinquish her so quickly after having just gotten started.

She'd learned that his patience, unlike his stature, was short. And while he genuinely loved torturing her, he never could hold off on the killing part for very long – he loved that part far too much.

She'd gotten used to the feeling of her life slipping away bit by bit and of the feeling of getting juiced up by the sarcophagus. It felt very much like getting supercharged, like she imagined it would feel to be a battery getting a refill. When she was completely healed there was a pleasant sort of hum, a vibration that passed through her entire body until the machine was powered down and she was removed.

She'd gotten to the point where she looked forward to her time in the sarcophagus so she knew she'd been in it more than a few times. Also, it meant that the pain stopped. And Kuk was more than capable of dishing out pain. He was a creative sonuvabitch, she'd give him that.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Two days in, the were still trying to dial Kuk's planet. They'd determined that the bastard was continually holding the gate open and so the SGC was dialing out regularly to attempt to make a connection when his connection went down, but it was a hurry up and wait game.

Jack was on edge like he couldn't remember being in a long damn time. He'd been ordered to rest but that was a tough order to follow, though he'd tried for Carter's sake. He'd caught a few hours here and there, knowing that the call to the gate would come if they made a connection.

Because they were so often dialing Kuk's planet, all other missions had been temporarily delayed as well. And the sheer amount money that was being spent on continually turning the gate made Jack's head spin. He was glad he wasn't going to need to have to justify the rescue mission to the bean counters. He was glad that Carter was deemed so important, though. Because, he couldn't imagine such commotion being made for just anybody.

He'd always known Carter was something special. That brain of hers was... well, in a league of its own as far as he could tell. But then she'd gotten him off of Edora and his admiration for her increased in a way he couldn't really articulate. Honestly, in a way he _hadn't_ articulated. He hadn't known how to. He'd been caught up in the situation with Laira. And then there'd been the undercover operation. And now, she was... gone.

He owed her. Big time. And he was going to give her her due as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He wasn't sure how, but he was going to show her how much he appreciated what she'd done. She deserved that.

Was she going to be in any sort of place to receive that when she got back? He didn't know. He hoped so. He'd do what he had to do to make sure she was okay. It was his job as her CO to help her get put back together – both physically and, if it was necessary, mentally. He'd see to it she got the help she needed. Fraiser would be on standby. MacKenzie, too, if necessary.

Jack turned over in his bed, still in uniform, unwilling to even undress should he be called to go. He didn't want to waste a single moment. He knew he wasn't going to be getting any more sleep. His mind was whirring too fast. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. He'd find Daniel and Teal'c and see about getting some coffee. It was time to haunt the control room for a while anyway.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He was either surprisingly uncreative or there were only so many ways to torture someone and they'd already been through them all, because Sam felt like they were repeating the greatest hits. She'd long since given up on stoicism. And he didn't seem to want any information out of her – he was just doing it for his own entertainment.

It led to a great sense of despair as she endured each session that was somehow worse than the last for the knowledge that it was never-ending because he could always bring her back with the sarcophagus. And that was the other rub. Because she was definitely looking forward to her time in the machine. It was a rush, the feeling she got when she was in it and when she was first removed. She felt strong and vibrant, for just a moment, even though she knew what was coming. Even though she knew what he'd be taking from her.

Also, the knowledge that Jolinar had somehow survived him and lived to give Sam the memory of him was both somehow comforting and also a huge source of conflict. Sam fought against Jolinar's memories as a general rule and having these were no picnic either, but knowing that the torture was survivable – even if only by way of the sarcophagus and his giant ego's need to keep killing her over and over again, thereby giving her team time to mount a rescue – gave her some glimmer of hope.

She did question her continued torture at the hands of Kuk. Where was her team? Why hadn't they come for her by now. It had been... she wasn't sure. More than a day, less than a week, probably. But they'd have come right back for her with reinforcements, right?

But she had to wonder, why was he so confident that her team wasn't coming for her? Was he so confident that he had all the time in the world to perpetuate his crimes against her person?

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The third day dawned and Jack was pacing the halls like a caged tiger. He knew he was wearing on the patience of the General who had banished him from the control room with a stern look and a sterner recitation of his rank and surname. Even Daniel had taken to giving him a wide berth. Teal'c stood off to one side just... watching him. Close by, Jack supposed, just in case he was needed.

He felt like a livewire, like a bowstring, like a recently struck tuning fork, he felt like he was firing on all cylinders at all times and like he was about to fly off his support structure at any moment. He needed to find a quiet place and find his center because he wasn't going to be any good to anyone, least of all Carter, in this condition.

"Teal'c, let's take a walk." Jack gestured with his head in the direction opposite the control room, taking them purposely away from the fray, from the action, from the hype.

"You seem agitated, O'Neill," the big man said after maybe a hundred steps in the right direction.

"This is taking too long."

"Kuk is merely amusing himself with a game with which he knows you have the rules. This is a tactic meant to demobilize you."

"It's working."

"In more ways than one."

Jack stopped and looked at Teal'c. The man wasn't wrong. It caused Jack to take a deep breath. He knew he needed to regroup. He started walking again and caught up with Teal'c who had never stopped. "Carter's been gone three days now."

"She has."

"Three days is a long time."

"It is three days."

"Anything could have happened to her."

"You are worried about what might be left to save," he deduced.

"Aren't you?"

"Major Carter is a formidable warrior. I believe that she will have been as strong as she was able."

Jack looked at Teal'c. "I believe that too."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

She screamed as the bones broke. He picked his heavy boot up off her hand as if she was no more than an insect he'd squashed. He sneered at her. "Ah, there it is, the sound I love so much. The sound you denied me for so long. Such stubbornness you showed. Do you know how much of a delight that made you?" He leaned over so she could see his face more clearly.

It sounded to her like he was saying goodbye. Did that mean he was finally going to kill her and _not_ put her in the sarcophagus? Or was he going to leave her broken and bleeding on the floor of his torture chamber for someone to find? Surely, eventually, someone would come for her...

She wasn't sure how long she'd been there. She couldn't tell if it had been just a few days or many. Time didn't have much meaning for her anymore between the incessant torture and the high of the sarcophagus. And she was never sure how long she was in that thing. Was it minutes? Hours? Days? How long, exactly, did it take to bring someone back from the brink of death?

"You have become a bit of a bore to me, though," he said, a huffy sigh punctuating his statement. "And I think I have grown tired of you."

"So now you let me die?"

"I could let you die," he said in a singsong voice, "but instead, I think I will let you live. With the memories of the torture you lived through and withdrawl from the sarcophagus coursing through your body. I think I shall let that be the last of my legacy with you."

Relief coursed through her body at the same time as dread built up in the pit of her stomach. She both felt comfort in knowing there was a possibility she could be saved and a distinct desire to just curl up and be done with it all.

He hauled her up by the arm with the broken hand and she whimpered as the hand was jostled. Her feet stumbled under her as she struggled to keep up with him as he propelled her towards the sarcophagus chamber – she knew the way well by now.

"One last trip through, so you are good as new. We want you perfect for the rescue party, now do we not?"

The syrupy grin on his face was enough to turn her stomach.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The place was eerily quiet. There wasn't a Jaffa in sight. If Jack didn't know better, he'd say the place was long abandoned.

The strike force moved quietly through the compound, clearing each room as they had been trained to do, but their careful training was wasted on this empty place. There was no sign of Kuk or his Jaffa. It felt surreal.

He was getting a bad feeling about the whole shebang when they finally found a bank of cells. They checked each one carefully even though the door to each was open. And there in the very back, was Carter, sitting alone. He stepped up so he was filling the doorway so she had no choice but to see him. He said her name once but she didn't seem to hear him. He said it again, and her head turned, but she was staring vacantly at the center of his chest and he knew, he just knew that she was looking through him.

"Carter," he said again, more softly. He looked behind him and gestured for the rest of the guys to stay back. He took a step into the cell. Her gaze flickered up to his face. A hint of recognition crossed her eyes. "Hey."

"Sir."

"Yeah."

"You're here."

"Came as soon as I could."

"How long has it been?"

He flinched. "Three days."

She nodded slowly. "Three days. Okay."

He looked her over carefully, she looked no worse for the wear save for some tears in her uniform that looked a little knife-perfect and some burns that looked kind of pain-stick like, but she was acting rather shell-shocked. "You ready to come home?"

She pushed herself to her feet. "Yeah."

She put one foot in front of the other, but she wasn't moving out smartly. She walked liked she did it by muscle memory alone. He put the fingertips of one hand on her shoulder blade as she passed by him. She flinched. He removed his hand with a grimace.

On the way back to the gate, all he could think was that if this was the rescue mission, he felt really bad about leaving Daniel and Teal'c behind.


	3. Chapter 3

Jack watched as Sam sat quietly on the edge of the infirmary bed and seemed to take in the interested looks of her teammates as Janet recounted the basics of her general health and well being. Because of the sarcophagus, they found out, she was in perfect physical health. "But," Janet was quick to point out, "after so many trips through the sarcophagus in so few days-"

"How many?" Daniel asked, softly.

"Well," Janet said, casting a glance at Sam, "we don't know exactly, but Sam can remember at least seven-" Daniel outright flinched, Teal'c's eye's narrowed, but Jack kept his reaction down to a tick of his jaw, "-trips through the device, there are bound to be withdrawal symptoms to contend with. I could keep her here to deal with them, but honestly, as she's so anxious to go home, there's no need to keep her if one of you would be willing to stay with her."

Daniel spoke up immediately. "I can do it."

Jack watched as Sam sagged with relief.

It was a good idea, letting her go home to familiar surroundings after what she'd been through. And if she was just going to have a case of the shakes and an upset stomach to contend with, then perhaps her own bedroom and bathroom was the kinder way to go.

"Good," Janet said with a curt nod. "Then here are her discharge instructions." Janet handed them over to Daniel. "The usual, with a side order of a bland diet and a couple of medications I'll call in to the pharmacy for you to pick up on your way home for nausea and the headache."

"Thanks," Daniel said as he accepted the paperwork.

Jack watched as Sam sat there much more despondently than he'd ever noticed from her before. And a certain amount of that could be chalked up to how tired she must be after her ordeal, but the rest he could only attribute to what she'd been through. And an idea started to form in the back of his mind.

"All right, gentlemen, if you'll leave her with me for a few more minutes, we can finish up and then I'll discharge her," Janet effectively dismissed them.

Jack, Daniel and Teal'c took the not-so-subtle hint and shuffled out of the infirmary and headed towards Daniel's lab.

Daniel started packing up books and paperwork he'd want to take with him to Sam's house when Jack picked up an artefact from his desk and started turning it around in his hands. "I think I should stay with Carter," Jack said thoughtfully.

Daniel didn't stop what he was doing. He just snorted. "You? Really?"

"Yes, me, really." Jack said, affronted. "Why?"

Daniel looked up and pinned Jack with his gaze. "Because. You're... you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, your bedside manner isn't exactly..."

"What?"

"You're not..."

" _What?!_ "

"Are you sure you're the right person for the job?"

"Why not?"

"I think Daniel Jackson is concerned that your relationship with Major Carter has not yet been appropriately repaired."

Jack sighed. He knew things were strained between him and Carter and had been since his undercover operation. Hell, they had been since Edora though he wasn't entirely sure why. He knew she'd worked her ass off to do something impossible to get him home but why that pissed her off he didn't know. Maybe if he took her home they could find some time to talk and clear the air between them. Between the headaches and dry heaves, anyway.

"What she's just been through, I know better than most people," Jack pointed out gruffly. "I can talk her through it."

"But will you?"

"Yeah, of course."

Daniel shot Jack a look.

"I _am_ capable of talking," Jack pointed out.

"She's not in a good place," Daniel obviously felt compelled to point out.

"You think I don't know that?"

"I'm just saying... tread carefully."

"So you're not going to fight me on this?"

"I think... I think maybe this might be good for both of you," Daniel said, handing over Carter's discharge paperwork.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Sam tried not to feel anger at the situation of needing a babysitter in order to be released to her home. It was better than being held in the infirmary. But Daniel... Daniel was a talker and he was going to want to dissect everything that had happened to her and she just wasn't ready to do that.

As she changed her ragged uniform out for the civilian clothing in her locker – the clothing she'd worn to the base several days ago and that really no longer felt appropriate on her skin – she thought about the ways in which she might convince him to just shut the hell up. And none of them were very nice.

She closed her locker with more force than was probably necessary and left the locker room for the relative sanctuary of her lab. It wasn't as if she couldn't be found there, but the space was hers. Since she'd been back she'd been in the briefing room or the infirmary and she hadn't yet had an opportunity to just breathe.

She walked into her lab to find the colonel standing at her lab table his hands busy with a device he really shouldn't be handling. "That thing gives off an EM pulse that can knock you down if you touch it wrong," she warned.

He set it down quickly but carefully and then turned on his heels to face her. "You're back."

"I am," she said, walking in, trying not to be irritated that her space had been invaded. "Did you need something, sir?"

"Oh. No. I'm your ride home."

"I thought Daniel was going to-"

"He was. But I thought..." He reached up and grasped the back of his neck and looked down at the floor. "I thought I might be able to help with this." He looked up at her then, square in the eye, his dark brown eyes intense on hers.

"I'm fine, sir."

"Now, see, I don't think that's true," he said, taking one step forward.

"I _will_ be fine," she amended.

"Yeah, you will be. And, as it happens, doctor's orders say somebody's gotta stay with you tonight and it looks like that's gonna be me."

She sighed. All things considered, if someone was going to be staying with her, she supposed the colonel wasn't a bad choice. At least he was relatively quiet, in comparison to Daniel. He took more entertainment than, say, Teal'c. And in the wake of what she'd learned about her feelings for him after Edora she wasn't sure she wanted to spend the night with him. Especially after the way he'd treated her when he'd been coming home and during his subsequent undercover mission. But she couldn't very well bring that up without having to explain herself. And she wasn't prepared to do that. So, she guessed she was going to have to sublimate her feelings and say yes to having him accompany her home.

Apparently, she dallied too long or sighed too hard because a shadow crossed his face. "If you're that upset about it, I can go get Daniel..."

"No sir," she said, "it's fine." She certainly didn't want to hurt his feelings. She frowned a little. She didn't realize she had the power to do that.

"We can go whenever you're ready."

"I'm ready now." She'd come to her lab for time and space. Not for any material thing.

"Then..." He gestured at the lab door.

She nodded and spun on her heels preceding him out of the room. They didn't talk as they made their way to the surface and signed out. In the parking lot she stopped, waiting to find out if she'd be allowed to drive herself home or if she'd be a passenger.

"C'mon," he said, gesturing to the left, "I'm parked right there."

She nodded. She should have known. She could fight. But that fell into the category of things she didn't have the energy for. She climbed into his truck and found herself marveling at the lack of pain. She knew of at least three formerly broken bones that should be screaming at her. And that was just the big stuff. There were knife wounds and pain stick burns and bruises and all should have made the motion unbearable. She grimaced.

He caught it. "You okay?"

"Fine," she bit out.

"Don't look fine."

"I'm fine," she reiterated.

He stared at his keys for a long moment. "Part of why you have someone with you is to talk about what happened."

"Can we at least get home first?" she asked with a sigh.

He cast her a sideways glance but started up the truck and pulled out of his space and set off down the mountain.

"I need to stop by my place and pick up a few things," he said as they drove along when it became clear that she wasn't going to fill the silence with idle chit-chat.

"Okay."

"It won't take long."

"That's fine."

"Did you want to stop and grab something to eat?"

"No," she said quickly. The last thing in the world she wanted was to sit in a restaurant.

"Take out?"

She quickly mentally inventoried her kitchen cabinets and refrigerator and realized that if they wanted to eat at all, which she honestly couldn't care less about, they'd probably need to get take out. "If you're hungry," she said with a shrug.

"You're not?"

"No," she said simply.

"You've gotta eat, Carter."

She just shrugged. The sun was going down. She gazed out at the sunset as he harumphed his displeasure with her despondency.

A few minutes later they pulled up in front of his house. He turned off the truck. "You wanna come in?"

"No." Which was only partially true. She liked his house. She generally liked being inside it. But considering how much she liked it, and how much she associated _it_ with _him_ , and how much she was trying to disassociate from him in general she figured it was best not to go in.

"Okay. I'll only be a few minutes."

"Fine."

He looked at her for a long moment and then climbed out of the cab, taking his keys with him. She knew it was to unlock the door. But the part of her that had just been tortured for several days was screaming at her that it was so she didn't run. She closed her eyes and took deep, soothing breaths. She might not be on the best of terms with this man but he'd never, ever hurt her the way that Kuk had hurt her.

True to his word he did appear a handful of minutes later with a duffel bag thrown over one shoulder. Something unbidden flopped over in her stomach at the image of him striding across his driveway to her with an overnight bag knowing he was preparing to stay with her. It was the stuff of old dreams unacknowledged. He tossed the bag into the bed of the truck before climbing back into the cab with her.

He looked over at her as he slotted the keys into the ignition. "You know what you want for dinner?"

"I told you, I'm not hungry."

"And I told you, you've gotta eat."

She shrugged. "You choose."

He sighed and started the truck before looking over his shoulder and backing down the drive.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

At her house he unpacked Chinese food while she made use of her shower. He was pretty sure she'd showered back at the base, too, but he understood the need so he wasn't going to say anything to her. She reappeared twenty minutes later dressed in yoga pants and an old, worn sweatshirt that had definitely seen better days but that looked like the sort of thing that was at least as psychologically comforting as physically.

"I got the coconut shrimp," he said, trying to entice her into sitting down at the kitchen island and picking up a set of chopsticks. "And the wonton soup." When she grimaced at the soup – she preferred hot-and-sour – he reminded her, "The doc said bland."

"No thank you, sir," she said, getting a glass out of the cupboard and filling it with water out of the tap.

He watched her move around him in the kitchen. At least she hadn't been as short with him as she had been in the truck. He had been beginning to think she had a personal problem with him.

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her, again, that she had to eat, but she was contemplating the shrimp thoughtfully so he didn't want to say anything that might spook her. She reached out and snagged one of the tempura fried things covered in the creamy white sauce and lifted it to her mouth. She chewed slowly, swallowed, then reached for another.

He cleared his throat softly and asked her, "You want a plate?"

She shook her head and wandered away from the food after having eaten only those two shrimp. He supposed, though, it was better than nothing. In a flash of inspiration, he filled a coffee mug halfway with the soup, then fixed himself a plate of food. He followed her into the living room where he found her curled up in one corner of the couch.

He handed her the half cup of soup before sitting down on the opposite end of the couch. She hummed in what he could only assume was approval or thanks, but she just held the warm mug to her chest.

He ate wrapped up in the silence she seemed to prefer. And when she lifted the cup to her lips to take a sip of the soup he found himself relieved.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He woke up to the sound of her retching. He didn't think it had anything to do with the two shrimp and half a mug of wonton, though. He found her bent over the toilet in her bathroom, hands flat against the floor. While she finished emptying the meager contents of her stomach, he wet two washcloths he found under the sink. One, he folded and laid over the back of her neck as she reached up and flushed the toilet. The second he handed her when she shifted to the side to sit down and lean against the wall. She used it to wipe her face.

"Sorry, sir."

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "It's not the first time I've watched you boot, Carter."

"Still..."

"You feeling any better?"

She shook her head slowly as her eyes slipped closed.

"Wanna go back to bed?"

She shook her head again. "Want to brush my teeth."

He chuckled lowly and reached out a hand to help her up. She accepted it and it made his heart flip over in his chest. Because he'd wondered, for a flash, if she'd accept the gesture given the cold shoulder she'd been giving him lately.

He leaned against her counter while she brushed and found himself settling comfortably into the domesticity of watching her carry out such a personal task. It wasn't as if he'd never watched her brush her teeth before, but he'd never done it standing in her bathroom in the middle of the night with her dressed in her pajamas. He'd forgotten how comfortable he was with the finer moments two people could share and he fought a pang of longing for marriage.

He had to refrain from physically shaking himself when he realized the direction his thoughts had taken. He shouldn't be thinking of Carter in close proximity to marriage. _Why_ was he thinking such things? Oh, he wasn't blind enough not to have noticed that she was beautiful. And he knew he counted her as as much of a friend as he was allowed to. But still, to pine for something he couldn't have because of a moment with her was... unacceptable.

He looked into the mirror to find her eyes on him. She was done brushing her teeth and her eyes were locked on him as she wiped her face with a hand towel. The look she was giving him was deep and speculative and he wasn't quite sure what to make of it, especially in tandem with his little slip. His heart and brain were warring over the look he saw in her eyes. His brain told him it was nothing. His heart disagreed.

"Now back to bed?" he asked her, desperate to shake his own internal musings.

"I don't think so."

"Want to go watch some television?" He hadn't seen a clock, but his internal one was telling him it was somewhere around three. It wasn't time to be up, but he wasn't going to force someone who'd just been tortured back to the dreamland that had awoken her with the violent need to purge her stomach.

"You're not going to believe this," she said with a wry smile, "but I'm hungry."

He grinned at her. "Well, let's go see if we can find you something bland."

She lifted one elegant eyebrow. "What? You think the coconut shrimp isn't going to go over so well?"

"Major, if you want the shrimp, you can have it."

She frowned slightly. "I think I'll skip it. There might be some crackers in the cupboard."

"Let's go check it out."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

When the sun was starting to rise and she was dozing on the couch, he called the base to find out if there was any pressing reason for him to be there or if he should stay with her. Unsurprisingly, the General asked him to keep an eye on Carter. SG-1 was on stand-down anyway until she was back in fighting shape. Or, Jack supposed, until it was deemed that she needed to be replaced.

But that wasn't going to happen on his watch. She was strong, and she was a fighter. She was going to make it through this even if he had to sacrifice what was left of his soul to make it happen. She wouldn't be happy giving up gate travel – even knowing the inherent risk of what had happened to her happening again.

She hadn't talked while they'd been up in the middle of the night. She'd watched an old black and white movie with him and fallen asleep just before the credits rolled. He knew she had to be tired – both physically and emotionally and he wished she'd been able to sleep through the night. But he knew the dreams she'd had – he'd had them too.

He also understood the mode of self-preservation that was causing her to not want to talk about what had happened to her. His default setting was to clam up, too. But he remembered talking about his own experiences when it had become clear that it was the price of returning to service and he remembered, also, how it had felt to finally share the burden. He'd only been able to talk about it peripherally with Sara and he wondered if Carter would view him more as help or hindrance if she needed to talk it out. Just because he'd been there didn't automatically mean she would feel comfortable talking to him.

He began to wonder if this was the best idea. If perhaps he should have let Daniel do the caring for her after all. But no, he'd have really pushed her with the talking. And Jack wasn't certain that pushing was the best method for dealing with her at the moment. No, he'd let her take her time, and come to him when she was ready. Or, go to someone else. He just needed to make sure she was aware that he was prepared to open up with her – she, better than most, knew he wasn't generally an open sort of guy. So he'd need to show her.

She must have awoken to the sound of his voice as he talked to the general because when he ventured back into the living room to hang up her cordless phone, she was blinking slowly as if trying to remembered what had brought her out to the couch.

"Morning," he said. "How're you feeling?"

She considered the question carefully before answering him. "Fine, considering."

Considering what, he didn't know. Not that there weren't a hundred reasons for her to use the caveat. Of course, it had to be a little strange to physically feel fine after what she'd been through. To not have physical proof of what had happened had to make it feel like a bad dream. And how were you supposed to deal with a bad dream? If she could see and feel herself healing, it might give her mind time to heal too. But how on earth was she supposed to deal with this when there were no physical benchmarks to show her how far she'd come?

He had to find some other way to let her soak back into life. To let her know she was moving forward. To give her the milestones she needed to feel like she was making progress. He turned a slow circle in her living room and was suddenly aware that despite the proximity to Christmas, there was not proof the holiday was coming.

"Come on, Carter," he said, suddenly clapping his hands and making her jump. "Get dressed."

"Why?" She asked slowly.

"Because, we're going to go get you a Christmas tree." It sounded like a fine idea to him.

She pulled a face. "I don't want a Christmas tree."

"It'll be good, I promise."

She looked at him like he was a little crazy, but she got up and headed back towards her bedroom anyway.


	4. Chapter 4

She sat next to him in his truck, but she had an uncertain look on her face.

"What?"

"It's only three days to Christmas. What's the point?"

"The point, Carter, is that Christmas is something to look forward to. It's a way to put a period on a year and move on. It's a memory," he said softly, "that isn't anything like the other stuff you're having to remember."

She nodded slowly. "So, we're buying a Christmas tree?"

"Yes."

"When I have a perfectly good artificial Christmas tree at home?"

"You can't use the phrases 'perfectly good' and 'artificial' in the same sentence as 'Christmas tree'."

"I think I did."

He huffed. "Get into the spirit, Carter."

"I'm not really in a Christmassy sort of mood, sir."

He turned to her, his shoulder pressed against the back of his seat. "I know. But some things we do anyway because they're important."

"I didn't know you felt so strongly about Christmas."

"I don't," he said. "But I do feel strongly about you."

Her eyes snapped up to his and he felt himself flush when he replayed what he said.

"You do?"

"You know what I mean," he said quickly.

He watched her eyes shutter over as her face fell minutely. What was that all about?

"Right," she said. "Well," she reached for the door handle, "let's go pick out a tree."

He followed her onto the lot wondering exactly what had just happened. What had he really seen in her eyes?

Could it have something to do with why she'd been cold to him since he'd come back from Edora? He thought back to her showing up on the planet and replayed his greeting to her. And the subsequent way he'd dismissed her for Laira. If she was just good old Carter, that woudn't have been a problem.

Maybe she wasn't just good old Carter.

And then the things he's said to her while undercover, things meant to cement his role... those things would be really hurtful to a certain kind of woman. Maybe one that had some sort of relationship with a man. Or... maybe a woman who wanted one? But to a subordinate officer they'd just be a burr under the saddle.

She'd been acting, he suddenly realized, like a woman who'd been hurt – not like a subordinate officer he'd irritated with his antics.

He reallized she was twenty yards ahead of him and already inspecting a tree. He strode over to her purposefully, intent on asking her what he'd missed but as he sidled up to her, he chickened out. "You like this one?" he asked instead.

"It's the first one I've looked at."

"Okay."

"If we're going through this exercise, we might as well do it right, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"In that case, I should look at more."

He trailed her around the lot for more than twenty minutes. He shoved his hands in his pockets wishing he'd worn gloves. It made him look at her fingers to find the tips white as can be. "Carter, think you can step this up? It's cold out here."

"Is it?" she asked idly.

That worried him. Was she unaware of her surroundings, or immune to pain? "Yeah, it is."

She walked back to a tree they'd seen several back and looked over at him. "This one."

"You're sure?"

She walked around it slowly, reached out to touch the soft needles. "Yes, this one."

"Okay," he said, a soft smile on his face. He paid, got the kid who was helping out at the lot to bag it, and then Jack threw it up into the bed of the truck. As they slid back into the cab he turned the heater on full blast, he looked at her – differently than he ever had – and noticed the bright blue of her eyes over the chill-flushed pink of her cheeks and wondered about seeing her differently, wondered what it might be like to feel a different type of affection for her.

He thought back to previous seconds and to Kawalsky in particular, since he'd been closer to Charlie than to any of the others. He definitely treated Carter differently than he treated Kawalsky, but she was younger, she was smarter, she was, well, a she. And maybe, if he were truly honest with himself, he'd admit that he did feel a different type of affection for her than he ever had any of his previous seconds. And he began to wonder what, exactly, that meant.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

She made coffee while he got the tree into the house. Then, she directed him on which way to lean it as he tightened it into the stand. When he stood up, she handed him a cup of coffee, black and slightly sweet, just the way he liked it.

"It looks good," he said.

"It'll look better decorated."

He didn't care for the sound of disinterest in her voice. "Where are your decorations?" he asked her, rather than get into her dour mood.

"Attic." She gestured vaguely towards the back of the house but she turned on her heels and he guessed he was supposed to follow her.

There was an attic hatch in the ceiling of the hallway back near the entrance to the bedrooms that he'd never noticed before – not that he'd spent much time near the bedroom doors of Carter's house. She pulled the cord and the steps came down but had to be pulled from a folded position to reach the floor.

She made to take a step up the ladder but he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "I'll go up."

"Sir, you don't have to do all of this."

"Carter, just..." he floundered for a moment, so many things on the tip of his tongue, "find the light switch, huh?" He cursed himself as the words came out of his mouth. Since when was he such a coward that he couldn't say the things that were on his mind? Sure he was generally irreverent, but that didn't mean he avoided things. It was just, the thing with Carter – the potential thing with Carter – was a really big deal. And he was completely unsure how to handle it. His revelation that she might have feelings for him was jamming up all the signals inside of him. No, it wasn't that he was a coward. It was that he truly didn't know what to say to her.

She flipped a switch near her shoulder and light drifted down through the hatch. "Light," she said unnecessarily.

He surveyed her for a long moment, long enough that her eyes cast to the side to avoid his scrutiny. He sighed and climbed the ladder only to find the most organized attic he'd ever seen in his life. He should have figured, really. He smiled to himself as he pulled himself up onto the plywood floor and located the boxes of Christmas decorations. One by one he handed them down to her until there was a stack of four boxes behind her in the hall.

Once more on her level, he closed up the attic and watched as she flipped the light off. They each picked up two of the boxes and carried them into the living room. Jack opened the first box and found Christmas hand towels and boxes of water and juice glasses with Christmas decorations on them. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Not this year," she said quietly with a shake of her head.

He felt lucky he was getting the tree out of her so he didn't push. He closed that box back up and moved on to the next. Christmas lights, indoor and outdoor.

"We'll need some of those," she decided and took the box from him and set it next to the tree.

The third box held a mixture of small decorations meant to hang around the house and stockings. She tipped her head to the side and considered the contents before indicating no, they wouldn't be needing that box.

Finally, he opened the last box to reveal cartons of delicate glass bulbs – no wooden or childlike ornaments for Carter, it seemed. And he thought it both sad and completely predictable that she'd have a beautiful but largely impersonal Christmas tree. He thought back over what he knew of her childhood. No, it was no surprise at all that she wouldn't have a tree full of Carter-family ornaments. He further figured that if any of those survived Jacob's single parenting years that they likely went to Mark who had provided a family to enjoy them. Jack wondered if the lack of well loved ornaments had anything to do with Carter's unexcited approach to the holiday.

Carter took the box and set it over next to the one with the lights and then looked at him expectantly.

"White lights or colored lights?" he asked, leaning over the box, rummaging through.

"I don't care."

"I know you don't, Carter, but choose something anyway."

She deliberated for a moment and then said, "White."

"White it is," he said with more excitement than the situation really called for. He pulled three bunches of lights out of the box and handed them to her. "Check to see if they work."

"If I put them in the box, they work," she objected.

"When was the last time you opened this box?" He demanded, his hands on his hips.

"I don't know," she said, exasperated, "two years? Three?"

"Then check them. I'm not going to string all those lights only to discover they don't work."

A ghost of a smile appeared around her mouth and he felt it deep in his gut. "Yes, sir."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Sam sat in the warm glow of the Christmas tree, the rest of the lights in her living room turned off per the Colonel's instruction. She cradled her fresh cup of coffee to her chest and waited for him to return from his shower. She hated to amit that she liked the way it had felt to do this with him – the Christmas tree – especially after the way he'd treated her on Edora and during the subsequent undercover op. The truth was, spending time with him felt good.

And, if she wasn't mistaken, their time together had changed in tone during the Christmas tree shopping. He seemed more speculative than she'd encountered from him before. She was used to the joking, irreverent Colonel, but the man she'd brought home with her was quiet and supportive and eager to re-engage her with the world. He made her want to try, despite being upset with him and how he'd treated her. She found that her feelings for him ran deep enough that the bad moments weren't enough to erase them completely.

Which left her in a sticky situation. It was one thing to have her commanding officer staying in her house, it was quite another to have the commanding officer for whom she had feelings staying in her house. Especially if he was going to be a quiet sentry of strength and compassion – she wasn't sure she could handle that. Jack O'Neill, the every day variety she could probably deal with. That man aggravated her as much as he amused her. But this man, this quiet, supportive man, made her want even more the things she could not have.

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask for Daniel when the colonel came into the living room rubbing a towel through his damp hair. He was dressed in jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt and though she'd seen him plenty in civilian clothing, being able to look down at his bare feet and up at his unruly, towel dried hair made the whole situation incredibly personal. She found that she didn't want Daniel as much as she knew she should make the switch for her own sanity if not for propriety, she just simply didn't want him. She wanted Jack O'Neill. In all the ways she had him and in all the ways she didn't.

She felt a wave of lust wash through her and heat her eyes. When the colonel looked at her he must have seen the heat there because his eyes widened and then quickly glanced away. Her desire for him had to be written all over her face. She looked away too, eyes back on the Christmas tree, the safe place.

It was beautiful, she'd give him that. He'd strung it with the white lights she requested and then only hung the silver, blue and green bulbs. If she squinted, the reflected light swirled into the pool of the event horizon.

When she had the guts to look back at him she found his eyes fixed on her. There was something in his face, something she'd never seen before, that sent a bolt of awareness through her body. If she didn't know better, she'd call that look speculation.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He knew better than to be thinking of her the way he was thinking of her. Carter wasn't a woman, she was his subordinate officer. But seeing her there, curled up on the couch in jeans and a sweater, the Christmas tree lights reflecting off her hair and making her eyes sparkle, the tightness around her mouth, the way she clutched the coffee cup to her chest, all of those things made her fragile and female and made the masculine strength inside him cry out for her.

It took only an instant for him to realize that his feelings for her were something more than he'd been willing to admit to himself and that it had probably been happening for a while. Maybe while he was on Edora and mourning the life he lost, if he were honest with himself, he was mourning the loss of her a little, too. At the time he'd couched it in the loss of his teammates, but it had been a good long while since he'd thought of Carter as merely a teammate. He thought of her as a friend. Possibly more. He'd just been so conditioned for so long to not feel the things he'd started to feel that he put a lid on them and pretended like they didn't exist. And it had been relatively easy, in the face of being exiled from Earth, to fall for someone else. But Carter... Sam... if he should admit it to himself, had never been far from his mind.

And seeing the heated way she looked at him a moment ago, he was suddenly quite sure that her feelings for him were outside the bounds of the way they were allowed to feel. And it didn't scare him. Or worry him. Or make him feel like something had gone wrong and needed to be fixed. It made him feel quiet and secure and dialed in. It made him feel like he was a part of something bigger.

There were so many things he wanted to say to her in that instant. He opened his mouth to speak and what came out was, "You need a refill?"

She held out her cup to him. "Thank you."

He nodded, retrieved her refill, poured himself a cup and, when he went back to the living room, sat down on the couch next to her rather than in the end chair where he should have sat. She didn't appear to be upset that he'd entered her personal space, though, so he relaxed into the cushions. She tilted towards him ever so slightly due to his weight, but she was clearly careful not to touch him.

"You were right about the tree," she said, unexpectedly. "It's beautiful. And it's nice to think about Christmas. I think I needed to think about it."

"You should come to Janet's on Christmas day, spend it with Cassie."

"Is that what you do?"

"Yeah."

She nodded slowly. "Maybe. I'm not sure I'd be great company."

"Are you kidding? Cassie loves you!"

"And I love her, too," Carter agreed. "But I'm not exactly the life of the party."

"You've still got a few days, see how you feel," he urged. He wanted to say he wasn't sure why he wanted her there, but he was afraid he was completely sure. And he knew Janet wouldn't have a problem with him having made the invitation.

Carter nodded. "Okay."

He smiled. Good. Maybe if she had something to look forward to she'd be able to start climbing the rope of life again.

She smiled back at him, if a little shyly and he was suddenly put back in mind of the potential electricity between them. It was wrong in so many ways, but what if he had the power to give her something that grounded her? Something to feel good about? Something to hold on to and look forward to? What if there was more than a spark of electricity between them? What if there was a genuine connection? He felt connected to her on a professional level like he'd never felt with anyone before. What if that translated?

He looked over at her and took a fortifying breath.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He was holding his breath. He'd inhaled like he was ready to speak and then he didn't say anything. He had an inscrutable look on his face that piqued her interest more than a little. "Sir?"

He cocked his head to the side and looked at her through shrewd eyes. "I'm gonna ask you something... just don't automatically dismiss it for propriety's sake. Okay?"

Uh-oh. That didn't sound good. Actually, it sounded like he was getting ready to broach the subject of her decidedly non-regulation-abiding feelings for him. But, he couldn't know about that.

Could he?

She nodded slowly, not at all ready to have to fess up to her feelings, not to his face.

"If I'm wrong, just, tell me I'm wrong and we'll go back twenty seconds like none of this happened, okay? But... Carter, Sam," he stressed her name, "does the thing that's wrong between us have anything to do with you maybe developing some kind of feelings?" He waited then clarified, "For me."

She felt herself blush and watched as his eyes widened almost imperceptibly. "Um..." She couldn't bring herself to confirm his statement. But neither could she deny it.

"I owe you an apology," he said, rather incongruously, she thought.

"For what?"

"I didn't truly realize what you'd done to get me home from Edora.." He screwed up his face as if remember a conversation during which he was chastised. "It was explained to me later. And it sounds like you really did rewrite the laws of physics."

"I did," she said softly, not wanting to go back in her memories to that time he was missing, when it hurt in a different way to have feelings for him. Now it hurt because there was nothing she could do about it. Then it hurt because she was blindsided by them and the possibiliy that she'd go on feeling that way for a man who would never been able to return her feelings – because he didn't know about them – left a raw and gaping hole inside her.

"And I owe you another apology."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"What I said to you, when I was undercover... I didn't mean it."

"Oh," she said, for a lack of anything else to say. It had sure felt like he meant it. It had been a slap in the face. She'd thought, if nothing else, that they'd been a sort of friends. It was that, more than his walking away from her on Edora, that made her hesitant to admit that she had inappropriate feelings for him. He'd have to have her reassigned. And she didn't want that.

He must have seen the war playing out on her face because next he said, "The truth is, Sam, I just want to know what you're feeling right now. I feel like we've been off on the wrong foot for a while now."

"It's my fault."

"Now, I don't think that's true."

"It is," she insisted. "You're right. I do... think about you in a way the Air Force wouldn't approve of."

He exhaled, like he'd been holding back half his breath all along, and nodded. "It's that way for me too. I didn't even realize it had happened."

"Me either. Until you were trapped on Edora."

"It started to come to me on a Christmas tree lot."

She couldn't help but smile at him. "So... now what? I want to say this is easy and that we can just... but we can't. And I'm in no position right now to..." She suppressed a shudder. As happy as she was about hearing he might have feelings for her too, she'd still just been through a huge ordeal and was going to need time to heal properly.

"I know," he said quickly. "What you've just been through – you've got all the time and space you need."

"I know that this," she waved her had between them, "complicates things. But, sir, you have to know that I won't let it affect my work." She hated the pleading sound in her voice.

He answered her gently. "I won't let it affect mine either. It'll just be something we know about each other."

She smiled at him then, feeling lighter than she had since she'd come home, lighter, perhaps, than she'd felt in a long time. She wasn't alone in how she felt. They couldn't talk about it, they certainly couldn't do anything about it, but it was out there.

She suddenly wanted all the regular little moments with him that she could have. Like Christmas at Janet's for Cassie. And team night. And their little breakfasts in the commissary that were usually just the two of them. She thought that maybe those moments would help her get through the feelings she had for him and the disjointed feelings she had following her captivity and torture.

She felt validated by their conversation and by his feelings. And the fact that they both understood that this was as far as anything could go? It seemed surmountable knowing she wasn't in it alone.

"So, something more than friends?" He offered her.

She ducked her head to hide her pleasure. "Yes, sir. Something more than."

He took a deep, audible breath, reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, then turned on the couch to look at the Christmas tree. "We did good, Carter."

She had a feeling he was talking about so much more than the tree.

End.


End file.
